The Liberation War of Bangladesh

I WAS IN THE FINAL YEAR of school in Calcutta when East Pakistan was transformed into Bangladesh in 1971. More than history, it was a lived experience and more so because Calcutta was the staging post of the liberation war. Nearly all the details of the turbulence that began with the Pakistan army’s Operation Searchlight on March 26, 1971, and concluded with General AAK Niazi’s surrender in Dacca on December 16, 1971, are firmly etched in my memory.

It was around April 1971 that I remember my father narrating an encounter with an Awami League leader who had just taken shelter in Calcutta. The Bangladeshi told him of the awkwardness he felt fighting the Muslim League at home and crossing into a part of West Bengal that was represented by an MLA from the same Muslim League.

In the middle of the year, while poring over the inside pages of a local newspaper, I learnt by pure chance of the detention of Syed Badrudujja,a former mayor of Calcutta and ex-MP who represented a constituency in Murshidabad district. An accomplished orator in both Bangla and Urdu, he was closely associated with the Pakistan movement. However, in 1947 he chose to stay on in West Bengal. The reason was spelt out in a newspaper article (Asian Age, November 18, 2018) by one Syed Badrul Ahsan: “In a divided India, with communal politics having already taken its toll, the Muslim minority of a free country would need a voice, a guardian. He was ready to be their spokesman.”

The details of why Badrudujja’s advocacy of Muslim minority rights got him into trouble with Indira Gandhi’s government are probably buried in the police archives of the state, but it is interesting that the conflict reached a flashpoint during Bangladesh’s liberation struggle. It may be presumed that the venerable Muslim leader harboured grave misgivings of India’s policy towards Dacca.

It is instructive to consider two contemporary accounts of how the decimation of the idea of Pakistan was viewed by the Muslim minority in India.

The first is A Stranger in My Own Country: East Pakistan, 1969-1971 by Major General Khadim Hussain Raja (2012), a lament over how and why the country’s military rulers failed to cope with the challenges posed by Bangladeshi nationalism and India’s determination to undo the Partition of 1947. General Raja, who is appreciative of Pakistan’s rise under Ayub Khan, was unsettled by the agitations in both wings of the country that led to the overthrow of the field marshal: “On 2 February 1969, we [my wife Rafia and I] proceeded to Saudi Arabia. During Hajj, I had the opportunity to meet Muslims from several countries … in particular, Muslims from India. Each one of them was distressed at the agitation and rioting against the Ayub government. They invariably opined that the Pakistani nation was committing a grave error and would regret this emotional flare-up in the years to come. They also expressed the view that Ayub Khan had built up an image of Pakistan as a strong and prosperous country that was a force to reckon with. The Indian Muslims were particularly distressed since Pakistan’s strength as a country and its leadership, were, by proxy, a source of pride and reassurance for them in their unenviable predicament as a victimised minority in a predominantly Hindu India.”

This pride in Pakistan was the prevailing mood among Indian Muslims until 1972. It should be remembered that Indian Muslim migration to Pakistan was common until the 1965 war.

The second account is also by a Pakistani army officer, Major General Hakeem Arshad Qureshi, who was stationed in East Pakistan and was a prisoner-of-war in India. In his book The 1971Indo-Pak War: A Soldier’s Narrative (2002), he recalled his incarceration in Ranchi. “From the railway station, we were transported to the POW camp by requisitioned trucks. I sat on the front seat with the driver. It was here that I realized how much damage our surrender had caused to the Muslims in India. The driver, a Muslim, was in tears. The Muslim population of India was deeply concerned about the effect that our abject capitulation would have on them as a community. Had we, for a moment,

risen above self and contemplated the disastrous consequences of surrender on us as a country, on the Indian Muslims in particular, and on the Muslim ummah in general, we would have probably decided against it and opted for a fight to the death…”

The counterfactual history is irrelevant, but there was a prolonged emotional disengagement of Bengal’s Muslims from Bangladesh’s rulers after 1972. The links that were forged were covert, and with the Islamist underground that emerged after 1975. After the August 2024 upheaval, Bangladesh has won back the elevated standing that Pakistan had among Indian Muslims prior to the 1971 war. This has profound implications for national security.

1969-1971A Stranger in My Own Country: East PakistanBangladeshBengal’s MuslimsMuslim LeagueOperation SearchlightThe 1971Indo-Pak War: A Soldier’s NarrativeThe Liberation War